HiI am interested in having some trout in one of my ponds.Does anyone know where I can buy live trout from in small quanties south of London?ThanksDaniel

I haven't got a clue about round London but up here in the north most trout farms seem quite happy to sell a few. I believe some pike anglers use them as livebaits If you turn up with a bucket and an aerator I doubt if they will refuse you, business is business!Just Google trout farm london and see which is closest to you.

1. Trout have a high oxygen requirement. You may get around this with aeration.2. Trout have a low tolerance for ammonia/nitrite. A good, koi-standard filtration setup and fairly low stocking density should get round this.3. Trout have a low upper lethal temperature. Rainbow trout will start to die at 25-26 degrees, and will suffer with daily average temperature over about 20. There is a review of this data here. The numbers are similar for brown trout. You can only really get round this by having a pond large and deep enough that some areas stay cool enough for the fish to find refuge.4. Trout are highly predatory. They will fin-nip and, once big enough, eat, anything else you put in with them.5. Trout will jump. I tried keeping some small brownies in a pond when I was a kid, and we lost a few because they jumped out and landed on the lawn, and a few others because they gill-netted themselves in the mesh I put over the pond to stop them doing this. We gradually lost the rest of them over the ensuing summer.

You have to have the right environment for any creature, certainly don't trout on a whim in bad conditions.

When people come in to buy fish of me the first thing I ask is how big is the environment. A chap was interested in one of my large koi last week, when I asked him how big his pond was it turned out to be 8' long 4' wide and the deepest part was 18", the fish was for sale at £230 but I did not sell it to him and told him his pond was not suitable for koi.

I don't stock goldfish bowls as they are not suitable for fish of any type.

For trout you need at worse a very large pond with at least one good area 6' plus deep, but better to think in terms of a lake which is at least an 1/8 of an acre with 8' depth of water.

A chap was interested in one of my large koi last week, when I asked him how big his pond was it turned out to be 8' long 4' wide and the deepest part was 18", the fish was for sale at £230 but I did not sell it to him and told him his pond was not suitable for koi.